First Look: Alien Hominid

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Metal Slug fans rejoice, the Newgrounds shooter is definitely coming.

By Jeremy Dunham

Frequenters of the popular flash site, Newgrounds.com are probably more than familiar with its terrific side-scrolling shooter Alien Hominid. But for those of you that aren't, you may want to take notice -- especially fans of classic 8 and 16-bit offerings like Metal Slug and Contra; as it's gameplay style is very much in the vein of those legendary titles.

What Alien Hominid shares differently from Metal Slug, however, is the fact that its action is grounded in a more humorous world. Based on the premise that your lead character has crash landed in front of FBI headquarters, the game follows your goofy yellow cohorts as they escape the clutches of the men in black, ex-soviet UFO wranglers, and giant mutated bird things. Though not as speedy as something like Gradius, it's still faster than its closest competition, Metal Slug. In fact, it plays almost exactly like a speedier version of SNK's popular shooter.

If you happened to already play the flash version of Alien Hominid, then you're in for a treat. As this newer, bigger adaptation of the game has an all-new graphics engine, several more levels, redone environments, and plenty of other changes. For starters, the enemy AI is much more aggressive -- in fact, it's extremely tough; and unless you have your reflexes up to par, you're going to get your butt kicked repeatedly. To help you out, your primary weapon can now be upgraded beyond that of a simple ray gun, and has the ability to transform into things like cannons and several other undisclosed weapons via power-ups. Of course, you'll have the ability to jump, duck, and bite the heads off your enemies as well, but the specifics of how everything is going to work is still being kept a bit of a secret.

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Another new feature that's sure to please shooter fans is the incorporation of two-person simultaneous play. And though the exact number of modes, levels, and other such information that supports both players still has yet to be announced, the one level of action we did get to mess around with had a strong sense of the old-school. It appears that the development team's philosophy is very much "entertainment through simplicity."

Needless to say, we're impressed by Alien Hominid and its willingness to take chances. It may not be a vast 3D world like every other videogame on the block, but it doesn't need to be -- as its retro run 'n gun action seems to get the job done well enough with its hands-drawn 2D presentation. Not bad for a team made up of just 12 guys who have seemingly come out of nowhere.

We'll be back with more on Alien Hominid in the next couple of months as we approach is suspected 2004 release (though, it could be 2005 -- nothing official has been announced). In the meantime, check out the first batch of screenshots taken from the console version located on our media page below.